[HN Gopher] Is your son a computer hacker? (2001)
___________________________________________________________________
Is your son a computer hacker? (2001)
Author : aty268
Score : 233 points
Date : 2021-05-04 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wh0rd.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (wh0rd.ca)
| throwaway823882 wrote:
| Playing Quake doesn't make you a hacker, it makes you rad as
| fuck. But if they play Rocket Arena, your child is a G.G. Allin-
| level lunatic.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| > I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or
| alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they
| listen to and the shows they watch, the company they keep and the
| books they read. You could say I'm a model parent.
|
| Um, no, not a model parent. Draconian.
| jugg1es wrote:
| "If your son is using Quake, you should make hime understand that
| this is not acceptable to you. You should ensure all the firearms
| in your house are carefully locked away, and have trigger locks
| installed. You should also bring your concerns to the attention
| of his school."
|
| Holy moly!
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Dad, where did you say your BFG was?
| lmilcin wrote:
| Also hide your nail gun.
| icecap12 wrote:
| I guess I was hacking at a young age then. Obtaining the
| pak1.pak file from a friend who had the CD automatically turned
| the freeware version into the full version of the game. The
| tough part was transferring it over a 28.8 baud modem. Took all
| blasted night on my dads "borrowed" Pentium 90. Oof...kids with
| broadband these days don't know how easy they have it.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Do you recall how you transferred the file? I'm curious. You
| likely didn't dial each other up, or did you? Did you employ
| some kind of p2p utility? IP-based? I don't know much what
| was achievable as a kid or teen back then.
| enneff wrote:
| You would just dial the other person's modem and that would
| give you a bidirectional steam of bytes from one machine to
| another. Anything you typed showed up in their terminal and
| vice versa. Then you could initiate a file transfer using a
| protocol such as Zmodem, which would stream the file in
| checksummed chunks so that parts could be retried if line
| noise corrupted them.
| FredPret wrote:
| I remember boobs.jpg loading one... line... at... a... time
| mhh__ wrote:
| Quake sounds like Cake, for any Brass Eye fans.
| _joel wrote:
| Watch out for the end of level Czech Neck
| sokoloff wrote:
| Having firearms _stored safely and appropriately_ does seem
| like generally good advice, regardless of whether your child
| plays Quake.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| Plot twist: the article is a stealth PSA about firearm safety
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| But if he/she is a hacker, surely they know how to pick
| locks... right?
| devmor wrote:
| Oh man, I'm lucky my father never would have believed this stuff.
| In 2001, I was putting together tens of 486 and 386 based PCs out
| of a heap of old parts donated by a family friend and the
| neighbors thought I was some kind of hacker.
|
| I fondly remember dad spending his tax refund to buy me a brand
| new Dell the next year, and coming home from work to find me at
| the kitchen table with it in parts. He said nothing at first, but
| from the look in his eyes, it took him about 30-40 seconds to
| remember that I knew what I was doing already.
| larrydag wrote:
| Alternate questionnaire.
|
| Does your child have interests outside of sports and video games?
| Does your child work independently on projects? Does your child
| look outside the box and solves difficult challenges? Does your
| child question the status quo and seeks to find answers outside
| of their domain?
|
| If you answered Yes to any of these questions then you are a good
| parent. Just make sure they aren't doing anything illegal and
| they will turn out okay.
| [deleted]
| poxy_ wrote:
| Amazing! "If your son has requested a new "processor" from a
| company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a
| third-world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies
| of American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in
| their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the
| security features that American processor makers, such as Intel,
| use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and
| you will most likely be told that you have to order them from
| internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that
| you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising
| him well. "
| zsmi wrote:
| I saw that too and was shocked. I am not the biggest fan of
| Sunnyvale California but calling it 3rd world seems overly
| harsh.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices#First_t...
| tekromancr wrote:
| Ah, a classic! I remember reading this as a kid thinking it was
| sincere and just getting madder and madder as I read
| bidirectional wrote:
| The exact same happened to me! I was terrified this was the
| type of thing my parents were reading. I think ability to spot
| satire like this is one of the most stark differences I notice
| between myself as a child and as an adult.
| ValentineC wrote:
| It's a bit sad how many of the links in the article don't work
| anymore.
| chpmrc wrote:
| Wait, this is article isn't sarcastic?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| The first few sentences were okay-ish, but the more I read,the
| more it sounded just plain absurd,border line controlling
| behaviour+ lots of silly assumptions.
|
| Going back to the topic itself, the vast majority of parents
| wouldn't even know where to start, not even mentioning if a kid
| has really became a haxor of sorts. Taking away computers,
| sending them out to the church,or doing others 'let's fix this
| quickly the adult way' things unlikely to help. I'm not a hacker
| but by the time I was 16 I was doing things on computer my
| parents won't ever comprehend or know how to put an end to it. By
| the time I'm 18,nobody can say anything to me anymore.
|
| The only real solution to this is to build trust in the family in
| a way that kids would know that no matter how bad they screwed it
| up, parents won't go after them but will work with them trying to
| undo it or at least learn from those actions so they won't happen
| again.
| TehShrike wrote:
| I actually went and searched for some of the text in this
| comment because it reminded me so strongly of real responses I
| saw to this article 20 years ago
| nickstinemates wrote:
| This was copypasta before the term existed. This and bash.org
| were staples of early internet 'hacker culture'
| [deleted]
| hueho wrote:
| This is a classic troll text.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Ok, so he missed the satire, but I give points for stating some
| simple truths.
|
| Despite being satire, it's an important topic and "trust in the
| family" (and in your parents in particular) is the keystone
| issue here. Everything else is secondary.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Fair enough, I definitely missed it being a satire: shouldn't
| have skimmed the content:)
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Sometimes the best commentary comes from taking satire
| seriously on accident. I thought your comment was great.
|
| Every one of the outrageous behaviors listed have
| definitely been someone's actual reality, and for some
| people it was several of those things. Equally outrageous
| is how often the parents have _no clue_ what awful things
| their kids are doing. Not the warez, pr0n, turf wars,
| freaking, hacking, etc.
|
| It's the stalking, harassment, and deeply seated
| psychological issues that are guaranteed to get worse by
| pulling a power-play and declaring victory. That is going
| now require extra work to correct. That other stuff is more
| likely to land your kid a great job/career than destroy
| opportunities to form relationships.
| aronpye wrote:
| It's a joke ...
| mdbauman wrote:
| A true classic, thanks for reminding me of this article.
|
| If I remember correctly, the "hacking manuals" section is what
| inspired my reading for much of middle school. I wonder how many
| other 12-year-olds turned in a book report on _Neuromancer_ to a
| horrified teacher because of this post?
| moolcool wrote:
| Covered by Martin Sargent of TechTV here
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkLtXfsPqVQ
| aasasd wrote:
| You forget to mention that the coverage was in 2002. Which
| makes me vaguely curious about the content.
|
| Edit: alas it's just a reiteration of the text, pretty much
| what I would expect from a modern Youtube clip on a channel
| with a name like 'TechTV'.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Thanks for that link. I have not seen a ScreenSavers clip in
| many years. I loved that show and watched it with my father.
| Everyone was in love with Morgan. What a strange, brief time
| when cable television could have a show dedicated to the
| internet and computing.
|
| I wonder where Leo Laporte is now.
| tmnstr85 wrote:
| 15 year old me read this headline as - how to be a hacker - do
| everything they're warning you about in here
| [deleted]
| devenblake wrote:
| "how to be a hacker" not to be confused with
| http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
| platz wrote:
| All it's missing is the pacifier
| racl101 wrote:
| Nah. My son just listens to a lot of Manson, plays a lot of
| Quake, and has penchant for stylish trenchcoats. He's a good kid.
|
| He would never become a dirty hacker.
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| "son"
|
| Because women can't be hackers, I guess?
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| women are smart enough to hide their tracks
| kilboy wrote:
| Old Gold. This is what I grew up imagining what all hackers are
| like.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| At Mark Zuckerberg's school I remember a story about him getting
| in trouble for PHP. The school had a zero tolerance drug policy
| and PHP was confused with PCP.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I know some one in Northern Ireland who got into trouble using
| FTP :-)
|
| FTP is common Protestant insult to Catholics.
| ben_w wrote:
| In reverse, I wonder how well known Irish and British slang
| is in the USA: "Bumming" can mean to obtain or make use of
| something that belongs to someone else by begging; "fag" can
| mean cigarette; "for the craic" ("craic" pronounced "crack")
| is "for fun".
|
| (And thanks to the very early part of my mother's
| Alzheimer's, I also know that an archaic meaning of "glory
| hole" is a cupboard for miscellaneous items, and the
| etymology of the sexual reference is that both are where you
| put your "junk").
| imwillofficial wrote:
| The first time you heard her casual use of glory hole must
| have been alarming, and later hilarious.
|
| (I'm sorry to hear about your mother, my condolences.)
| ben_w wrote:
| Absolutely, and thank you.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Bumming is pretty common here. We don't say the other word.
| dharmab wrote:
| A friend nearly got expelled from high school when the VP
| accused him of hacking grades.
|
| His offense? He had a shortcut to Notepad in his shared folder,
| which was seen as a scripting tool.
| jhgb wrote:
| > The school had a zero tolerance drug policy and PHP was
| confused with PCP
|
| This just shows that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| I got banned from our schools computers for installing "hacking
| tools." I had NetHack in my personal drive.
|
| This is after I got in trouble for "plagiarism," for including
| a hyperlink in an essay.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Mark is actually an old school AOLer and AIMer and used to
| program CC chat programs and punters.
|
| http://patorjk.com/blog/2013/04/09/was-mark-zuckerberg-an-ao...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Ahahahaha.
|
| I remember (vaguely) pinging AOL's irc servers with hays cmdset
| commands and as a result my parents getting a letter to the
| effect that I was a computer criminal and we were on some
| 'blacklist' forever, fortunately this apparently blacklist didn't
| seem to be shared between ISPs so I was back causing chaos within
| days >_<
|
| And now here I am, mid thirties, children, and I wonder if I
| would let my kid play DOOM when he is 8 or 9.. I think I'll let
| him play the original ones, but the newer games seem to be much
| more intense (maybe that's just down to the graphics/music?)..
|
| Or I just let him play everything.. I dunno, grand theft auto
| (granted, the top down one) did me no harm when I was around
| puberty heh...
| mjburgess wrote:
| Exposure builds resilience. All shielding does is turn people
| into hysterics who cannot see through the artifice, and assume
| everyone is duped by it into being murderous zombies.
| kaybe wrote:
| I have to say, as a kid, all these games and movies were much
| more harmless than the news.
|
| The news had actual blood on the streets, from real people
| who had actually _died_ there, real violence, real panic,
| real bombs and real war. If you shut off the TV, it does not
| go away, it 's taking place somewhere out there, in the real
| world. A game is a joke in comparison.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I don't worry about games for those reasons, I worry about
| them because they're extremely seductive and attention-
| capturing while producing almost no real benefits or
| skills. I quit video games cold turkey around the age of 16
| after I realized that soo often, I'd find myself sit down
| to play counterstrike after school, and in a blink of an
| eye it would be 1AM.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| I'm not a parent (yet), but I do wonder about how I would
| enforce some of the double standards -- I was playing DOOM at
| age 8 and looking at somewhat questionable content online (my
| parents had no idea), and I like to think that I still turned
| out somewhat fine.
|
| Would I really want to use my hacker-grade computer knowledge
| to enforce a parental control jail on my childrens' ability to
| consume this meaningful information about the real world at a
| young age?
|
| (Being the naive developmentally-delayed kid in the peer group
| who was overly-shielded by parents also is VERY bad.)
|
| One would even argue that DOOM jumpstarted my CS career.
| ldoughty wrote:
| My own plan: shield them until they are old enough to
| understand the concepts of trust and respect.. then pull back
| the safety net, but maintain quiet vigilance (like montoring
| (read only) the dns queries or system logs, and maybe keep
| access time window restrictions).
|
| If that really want questionable content, it will be cat and
| mouse game. Build trust and respect... Give them enough rope
| to hang themselves... Occasionally do responses without
| admitting knowing... then punish if they cross your safety
| threshold, but then they will know you somehow know.. so a
| cat and mouse game will begin if they are not responding to
| the mutual(ish) trust plan.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The line about "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" slayed me.
| h2odragon wrote:
| One of the finest trolls Adequacy.org produced, and that's not a
| small pool nor an easy race to call.
| daveslash wrote:
| It needs to be up-voted that this is satire and not a real post
| from a 2001 concerned parent.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org#Notable_stories
| developer93 wrote:
| You don't say?
| anm89 wrote:
| It seems like a majority of the comments here are not aware
| of this.
| bamey wrote:
| >If your son has requested a new "processor" from a company
| called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-
| world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of
| American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in
| their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the
| security features that American processor makers, such as Intel,
| use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and
| you will most likely be told that you have to order them from
| internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that
| you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising
| him well.
|
| Hahaha. 2001 was pretty good.
| daveslash wrote:
| Check out the link _" raising him well"_ -- If this _really_ is
| from 2001, then I 'm quite surprised that link is still
| valid...
| devenblake wrote:
| One of those reviews is dated 2005(!!)
| ro_bit wrote:
| So this is what the CPUBenchmark authors wrote before making
| CPUBenchmark
| exciteabletom wrote:
| Did you mean the Intel shill site userbenchmark.com?
|
| https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/AMD-Ryzen-9-5900X/Rating/4087
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| That was a wild ride.
| ro_bit wrote:
| Yup! Misspelled the name
| jchw wrote:
| I was not gonna comment, but wow, they really are not
| backing down. From their Intel vs AMD value page:
|
| > We don't
|
| > Put lipstick on pigs for sponsorship fees, our users are
| our only sponsors.
|
| > Care for brands: red, green or blue. PC hardware isn't a
| fashion show, performance comes first.
|
| > Test at 1440p or 4K: high resolutions are rarely optimal
| for gaming (refresh rate > size > resolution).
|
| > Get fooled by the corporate army of anonymous forum and
| reddit influencers that prey on first time buyers.
|
| Righto. So they don't shill. And they know how to benchmark
| and measure the right things; except for the period of time
| when they accidentally showed AMD topping the charts and
| then had to adjust their expert benchmark scores. 4K gaming
| isn't real; it's a conspiracy invented by Big GPU and no
| gamers want it because clearly all gaming graphics is
| chasing higher FPS. And not only are they _not_ shills,
| _YOU_ are!
|
| What a convincing argument. Others more reputable in the
| benchmarking scene considered userbenchmarks to be poorly
| executed to begin with, but wow, they really do not know
| how to take an L, at all. Of course it is convenient that
| the cases where AMD processors would succeed at are
| irrelevant.
|
| Now I'm not playing games most of the time so a high
| framerate in games is hardly important to me. But who would
| I rather get advice from: Sour grapes userbenchmarks, or
| literally any other reputable benchmarking site? They inch
| closer and closer to blatant SEO SPAM every year.
|
| I know Intel is not good at PR, but they really ought to
| pay these people... to stop making them look bad.
| wincy wrote:
| Hah my first computer that I built myself as a teenager was an
| AMD Duron, right around 2001. Which to be fair, I guess I am a
| hacker as far as my mother is concerned, so they were right!
| ant6n wrote:
| I got a Duron 650 together with a Geforce 1 back in 2000.
| That Geforce was really expensive butw a dud, it was slower
| than the cheaper/older TNT 2`s all my friends had...
| cosmodisk wrote:
| This does bring some memories. Also Matrox looked like
| something out of this world at the time with their
| multiscreen support.
| twiclo wrote:
| This constant linking to other things is a bit annoying. I found
| most of them are older books. I clicked the spanking link to
| maybe find a book on why you should/shouldn't spank your children
| and instead got a porn site.
|
| Who is this guy?
| genpfault wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org#Notable_stories
| meepmorp wrote:
| > The Adequacy authors began as trolls on Slashdot and
| Kuro5hin, other technology-oriented discussion sites.
|
| It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying.
| 2ndbigbang wrote:
| The post is from 2001. The spanking.com domain name was
| probably owned by someone else at the time and might not have
| been NSFW. The books are all going to be 20 years old at least.
| rishabhd wrote:
| I am not sure if it was a satire or an actual article from
| someone concerned.
| underseacables wrote:
| This is hilarious!! I met almost all the list criteria and turned
| out ok.
| balabaster wrote:
| I can't tell if this was legit fear, outright propaganda or
| satire. Having had a computer in my life since the age of 8, this
| seems like one hilarious cliche on top of another, the kind of
| thing you'd expect to see as an ad playing in the background of
| the 1995 cult classic: Hackers :D
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's bad satire, making all the obvious jokes and taking itself
| too seriously. It's a one-liner dragged out to three pages.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| When this first appeared I _thought_ I remembered it had been
| picked up by the mainstream press, but I can 't find a mention
| of it on news search.
|
| You can imagine how easily the masses would have accepted this
| in 2001.
| syshum wrote:
| Something being picked up by the "mainstream press" does not
| mean it is not satire.
|
| There are all kinds of satire and hoaxes that have been
| reported by the mainstream press as truth and reality...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Yes, my point was that especially in 2001, it would have
| been easy to not have the technical acumen to realize the
| story was satire, and to write a serious news story about
| it.
| balabaster wrote:
| I recall thinking back then that hackers were mysterious and
| cool. Fast forward to becoming a computer programmer and
| spending my life reverse engineering basically everything to
| be able to do my job and it seems laughable how much fear
| people have of basically anyone that spends time
| understanding anything they don't.
|
| Look! A witch! :D
|
| Also, I guess if you were a girl, you had a free pass,
| because if this article _was_ anything to go by, hackers
| could only be boys(?)
| developer93 wrote:
| I suspect it's also a nod to the prejudice of the father,
| if he had been real.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| A visual 1993 guide: https://imgur.com/a/KhUINw1
| johnnythunder wrote:
| Did he ask for one of these for his birthday?
| https://surplus.gov.ab.ca/OA/ItemDetail.aspx?AuctionID=31633
| amalcon wrote:
| _> DOSing involves gaining access to the "command prompt" on
| other people's machines, and using it to tie up vital internet
| services._
|
| I didn't like most of it, but that bit cracked me right up.
| underdeserver wrote:
| wat
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Wow, amazing satire. Can someone provide some context - what is
| this website? I tried to go to Front Page but I think we're
| hugging the site to death.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think the best pithy description of adequacy.org I got was
| "Graduate school for slashdot trolls"
| _joel wrote:
| Whilst it might be, the same traits were being used in active
| propaganda campaigns by those tech companies invested in
| killing off Linux (you know who)
| Alex3917 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| The Linux being an illegal operating system is only a slight
| exaggeration of the FUD being put out by Microsoft at the time.
|
| Any time Microsoft publicly talks about their love and support of
| Linux, someone in the room should point out their multi-pronged,
| multi-year, highly-funded, campaign to poison the well.
| david-cako wrote:
| Microsoft has been around a long time and they seem to adapt
| pretty rapidly. I wonder what percentage of the company today
| was around during Ballmer days, and how the culture has changed
| over time within the company. Naturally it's going to be driven
| by the market, but I wonder, are older MS folks moving with the
| culture shift? Or is it newer hires that are pushing for the
| open source ethos?
|
| As a Mac and Linux user, I really like Microsoft these days.
| VSCode, WSL, Rust, containers, Surface, .NET Core, all are
| pretty sweet.
| moksly wrote:
| I think a lot of the culture of Microsoft remains the same as
| it was when Balmer left. As much as it's fun to laugh at his
| "developers, developers, developers" sort of thing, his real
| legacy should probably how Microsoft formed its
| Business-2-Enterprise strategy under his rule.
|
| When AWS first blew up they sort of struggled in European
| Enterprise because they originally went Google route or
| automating everything while taking a "our way or the high-
| way" attitude toward legalisation and localised agreements.
| This is basically why Azure was capable to fill the void that
| AWS was struggling to fill. Modern AWS has learned a lot from
| Kim that though, and are now ahead of Microsoft in many
| areas. I still can't get a guarantee that only European
| citizens working in the EU will be the only people who work
| on my Azure cloud like I can from Amazon.
|
| But as a whole, the sort of setup where I can call Redmond
| directly when shits hit the fan, and they will even give me
| hourly updates via phone until the issue has been resolved.
| That's a Balmer sort of thing. And so is the financial aspect
| of how much more sense it makes to chose the Microsoft option
| once you're already in bed with them. If anything that last
| hit has only grown under the new Microsoft.
|
| I mean, how can I justify to my political leadership that I
| need to buy a Microsoft Teams competitor when it's already
| included in our office365 setup? I can't, and this just
| snowballs over time.
|
| I'm not unhappy about this by the way. Through the past many
| decades Microsoft has been one of our best business partners
| as far as Tech goes. Which is very likely why AWS has adopted
| the approach.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| I always thought it ironic that Linux killed Sun rather than
| Microsoft.
| xroche wrote:
| And we may remember the "Linux is a cancer" (https://www.thereg
| ister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_ca...), or more subtly
| the SCO "suicide attack" attack against open-source:
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/2563673/update--micros...
| codeulike wrote:
| _8. Is your son obsessed with "Lunix"?_
|
| _BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal
| hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker
| named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War._
|
| ...
|
| _Lunix is extremely dangerous software, and cannot be removed
| without destroying part of your hard disk surface._
| willis936 wrote:
| wtf I love lunix now
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| _in Russia, computer programs delete you!_
| coward76 wrote:
| Is your son or daughter safe from the Russian menace "Tetris"?
| Some common symptoms include them attempting to organize their
| room into well fitting shapes such as neatly fitting boxes.
|
| True Hackers use Compuserve or Prodigy.
| daveslash wrote:
| Overheard in the office a few years ago:
|
| _" Did you know that Tetris was originally written in
| Haskell?"_
|
| _" Really? I thought that it was originally written in
| Russia?"_
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Hah.
|
| Reminds me of a Facebook post I saw the night after working
| on a class project at a friend's apartment. I think it was
| "you know you live with CS people when you come home and hear
| people talking about the difference between Pickles and Sea
| Pickles" (CPickle).
| emidln wrote:
| Prodigy spoke ppp, was reasonably priced, and still had news
| access in 99/00 and a good feed at that. At some point they
| underwent a series of mergers/sell-ofs/rebrands until Yahoo
| owned them. I think their nntp servers still worked when I
| switched to cable internet in around 03.
|
| Prodigy offering $400 off a $399 computer at Best Buy if you
| signed up for a 3 year service agreement was why I had my first
| modern computer.
| aasasd wrote:
| You laugh, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
| aasasd wrote:
| Also, Tetris taught me this: https://media.sketchfab.com/mode
| ls/c4df0c4fb6904e9e80c13ef8e...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| When Call of Duty 4 came out, I played it so much I would
| have vivid dreams almost nightly of playing "paintball" with
| friends, suddenly realizing we were using real guns and ammo,
| and we would continue "playing" even after we realized the
| death and carnage that was resulting.
| geocrasher wrote:
| I had this when I played Minecraft a lot. My wife and I (who
| both played for hours on end almost daily, running servers
| together) both started the see the world as blocks. It
| changed our perception quite a bit. It didn't bother us, we
| thought it was cool. It didn't interfere with anything. We
| maintained our understanding of reality vs game. Until a
| creeper blew up our house IRL. That was unusual.
| FredPret wrote:
| This nearly killed me with Trackmania a few years ago and
| learning to drive a real car. In Trackmania you had to slam
| the steering to one side when turning. On a highway... not so
| much
| aasasd wrote:
| I had a persistent problem with racing games, because
| analog sticks always seemed too lightweight and fickle, and
| basically I mostly could either turn or not turn. Until I
| finally learned with PS Vita's minuscule sticks to hold the
| thumb crooked in mid-air and fiddle the stick just a
| little.
|
| It's also weird how little of muscle memory immediately
| transfers between racing games, specifically sim-ish ones.
| Each time I switch from one to another, I'm driving like a
| drunk monkey again. Plus there's plenty of difference
| between more arcadey handheld games and more involved
| desktop/big-console ones. Not much surprise that with all
| this, games barely approach actual driving feel and skill--
| I've heard that only Assetto Corsa has some magical
| feedback for steering wheel controllers, that conveys the
| feel of a car riding on asphalt.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Can we get away from the politics and get back to the topic at
| hand? The dangers of Quake as a hacker training ground for young
| impressionable minds?
|
| Don't get me started on the potential pitfalls of AMD processors.
|
| Related story: I one time almost got our internet shutoff by
| trying to telnet into various ISP (EarthLink) IPs when I was like
| 13.
| atum47 wrote:
| >does your son use Quake
|
| I lost it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What scares me is that I can picture some parents having read
| this and thinking it was good, serious advice.
| grawprog wrote:
| >Popular hacker software includes "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy"
| and "Flash"
|
| OK i have to admit. This made me laugh.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| If your son can backtrace a firewall through a series of tubes,
| he's definitely a hacker
| hacdaddy wrote:
| tracerT for you and me!
| swagtricker wrote:
| Even better - you can now troll Bill Gates by reminding him that
| Linux was both more successful than and outlasted his marriage:)
| Smithalicious wrote:
| Please do not do this
| derrikcurran wrote:
| I come to Hacker News to avoid garbage like this.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dangus wrote:
| People are often surprised at how similar HN is to all other
| forms of social media.
|
| The only thing saving it is the quantity of people who don't
| know about it.
|
| It is 100% always a waste of time and I'm literally wasting
| time right now when the other screen in front of me has the
| thing I should actually be doing.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| People become surprised when they see something different
| from the norm. If they are surprised, it tells you that the
| norm is different.
|
| And look at that, the comment in question is now dead.
| That's the system working.
| devilduck wrote:
| Ask someone else and they might call that censorship.
| developer93 wrote:
| I look at it as slightly more constructive procrastinating
| than can be achieved with other social media, in that I
| actually learn something a lot of the time, even if the
| things I learn don't immediately improve my life.
| emidln wrote:
| This reminds me of prime Slashdot commentary. My recall isn't
| good enough to have an intuition if this would have been
| negative or +5.
| devilduck wrote:
| Well that's a mistake on your part since HN is rife with
| hubris and garbage.
| phil_folrida wrote:
| Understood though it was the reality of the 90's. did it
| changed? yes absolutely, but you were tagged as a Lunatic, to
| introduce Linux in corporate environment.
| elisaado wrote:
| the comment is flagged now, what did he say?
| guerrilla wrote:
| if you want to see comments that are flagged, turn on
| showdead in your settings.
| Bootvis wrote:
| You would be an asshole though.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| If you can't stand the heat, you gotta get out of the kitchen
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dangus wrote:
| Maybe, but billionaires shouldn't exist even if they are
| philanthropic. There's a reason Bill Gates is a household
| name and many other innovators are not, and it involves a lot
| of zeroes.
|
| If you are going to be a billionaire, you surrender your life
| to being on the front page of the tabloids.
|
| In my mind the only reason to continue working after making
| around $10 million is greed. Bill Gates himself cites his
| busy schedule as a detriment to the marriage. A guy that
| didn't need to work another day in his life if he didn't want
| to since 20+ years ago!
|
| Hot take: philanthropy is a tax avoidance scheme, even if it
| is helpful to the world. Billionaires and millionaires
| improve their image by getting to _choose_ where their wealth
| goes, instead of being _required_ to surrender wealth and
| have it be used the way that the people want through
| representative government.
|
| In reality, you don't become a billionaire without being
| ruthless, cut-throat, and a very big asshole.
|
| Remember all the stories about Bill Gates yelling at
| engineers in the 90's?
|
| https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_850292
|
| Bill Gates is just another boss who demanded his employees
| sacrifice their hours for his wealth.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and
| generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| 310260 wrote:
| >Hot take: philanthropy is a tax avoidance scheme, even if
| it is helpful to the world. Billionaires and millionaires
| improve their image by getting to choose where their wealth
| goes, instead of being required to surrender wealth and
| have it be used the way that the people want through
| representative government.
|
| >In reality, you don't become a billionaire without being
| ruthless, cut-throat, and a very big asshole.
|
| Very much agree. It's so strange that so many people around
| the world try and align themselves with billionaires to
| some degree or another. In some cases, they'll even defend
| them tooth and nail when met with any critique (like Elon
| Musk's harem of fanboys).
|
| Idolizing billionaires or trying to align with them makes
| no sense because there isn't a realistic chance that you'll
| ever see the level of success they did. Maybe it's fun to
| fantasize about or gives you something to work towards but
| there are much more interesting and worthwhile things you
| can do with your time than endlessly pursue wealth.
| endominus wrote:
| The idea that governments spend their money responsibly and
| according to the wishes of their citizens is... The kindest
| thing I can say is that it's not a universally held opinion
| (or even, in my experience, a significant-minority held
| opinion).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You know, it feels that way to citizens because the
| government is spending money in ways that _other
| citizens_ want, but not them specifically. Iowa corn
| growers love corn subsidies and politicians make ethanol
| pledges to appease them, home owners love mortgage tax
| deductions so no politician will dare threaten them,
| military equipment manufactures love that we spend
| ludicrous amounts of money on our arguably insanely-too-
| big military, etc. Sure, there 's some straight-up
| corruption too, but personally I think the waste from
| that pales in comparison to the waste of politicians
| simply trying to appeal to as many constituents as
| possible for votes.
|
| Representative government is, unsurprisingly, a pretty
| good reflection of the people it governs. What we are
| saying when we say we don't think that government spends
| money responsibly is that our society loves to create
| inefficiencies to exploit for their own gain and don't
| care about the consequences to others.
| endominus wrote:
| I understand the point that preferences are not
| homogeneous across the population, and therefore there
| will always be a portion - often a significant portion -
| of government spending that any given citizen will
| disagree with. But I would argue that a significant
| amount of spending by the government _is_ purely
| wasteful. Furthermore, one of the most useful roles of
| government, in my opinion, should be the efficient
| allocation of societal resources. Appeasement strategies
| for special interest groups are the furthest you can
| possibly get from that. Ethanol pledges that deepen
| dependence on inefficient and damaging businesses, zoning
| laws that create hard and increasingly intraversible
| class splits between property-owning Eloi and the forever
| wage-slaving Morlocks, and continued investment in an
| unreasonably sized military infrastructure are good for
| certain interests, but overall bad for society as a
| whole. If the government consistently makes decisions
| that are bad for society as a whole, I would posit that
| it is failing at a critical role.
|
| If that is the case, then a certain portion of wealth
| going to actually good causes rather than the government
| would be a good thing, not an ethical violation. If the
| government cannot be relied on to spend the wealth of its
| people responsibly - if instead it fritters that resource
| away in power games and appeasement - then avoiding said
| taxes is not, fundamentally, immoral.
|
| Off the top of my head for other bad and expensive
| government programs, there's the TSA and other Department
| of Homeland Security initiatives that fall under the
| umbrella of Security Theater; the support, both legal and
| economic, of the private prison industry; arms sales to
| ethically dubious partners; political vanity projects
| like the "Bridge to Nowhere"; ideologically driven
| propaganda (Reefer Madness, anyone?); and straight-up war
| crimes.
|
| Representative government may be a good reflection of the
| people - I have misgivings about that claim, but I'll let
| them go - but the people should demand better than a
| reflection. I don't want my moral equal leading me; I
| want someone better. I want someone who isn't afraid to
| make an unpopular decision when it's the right thing to
| do.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > If the government consistently makes decisions that are
| bad for society as a whole, I would posit that it is
| failing at a critical role.
|
| Ok, but who's fault is that? We are the ones who vote for
| these people.
|
| > If that is the case, then a certain portion of wealth
| going to actually good causes rather than the government
| would be a good thing, not an ethical violation. If the
| government cannot be relied on to spend the wealth of its
| people responsibly - if instead it fritters that resource
| away in power games and appeasement - then avoiding said
| taxes is not, fundamentally, immoral.
|
| I disagree because fundamentally taxes are used to
| support public services that benefit society as a whole.
| Cheating that process is cheating society. You may have
| the luxury of being able to forego many of those services
| but a lot of people do not.
|
| > Off the top of my head for other bad and expensive
| government programs, there's the TSA and other Department
| of Homeland Security initiatives that fall under the
| umbrella of Security Theater; the support, both legal and
| economic, of the private prison industry; arms sales to
| ethically dubious partners; political vanity projects
| like the "Bridge to Nowhere"; ideologically driven
| propaganda (Reefer Madness, anyone?); and straight-up war
| crimes.
|
| Yes, and I strongly encourage us to use our power in the
| democratic process to oppose those things. If people
| really didn't want those things, they would vote for
| politicians who also didn't support them. The fact that
| they don't means that they have other priorities in
| selecting politicians and are willing to compromise on
| those things.
|
| > Representative government may be a good reflection of
| the people - I have misgivings about that claim, but I'll
| let them go - but the people should demand better than a
| reflection.
|
| I think that's a very strange statement. If we want our
| government to be better all we have to do is vote for
| better people even if it is not in our individual best
| interest. You are demanding that the government be better
| than the people who elect it, but that very demand can
| only possibly be implemented by said people!
|
| > I want someone better. I want someone who isn't afraid
| to make an unpopular decision when it's the right thing
| to do.
|
| Then vote for that person and encourage others to do so,
| that's how our society works. You are extremely arrogant
| to think that you should be able to dictate to society
| how it should work and then get pissed off when it
| doesn't listen to you and claim moral superiority by not
| paying your taxes.
| endominus wrote:
| >I disagree because fundamentally taxes are used to
| support public services that benefit society as a whole.
|
| A large part of my point is that this claim is not true.
| The purpose of a system is what it does. Taxes are used
| to appease constituents, not improve society. They may be
| related, they may overlap at some points, but they are
| not the same.
|
| >The fact that they don't means that they have other
| priorities in selecting politicians and are willing to
| compromise on those things.
|
| Not necessarily. People aren't machines of pure
| rationality. They do not vote for their best interests or
| their moral beliefs. They are misled and trained against
| seeking alternatives. They vote for their "tribe," not
| out of a sense of moral duty. And your impression of
| democracy is extremely idealistic - you should read the
| book Democracy for Realists. It sheds a lot of light on
| the actual patterns and causes of voting behavior. In any
| case, votes don't matter as much as you think they do.
| The democratic process acts more as a relief valve for
| societal tension than an effective method of enacting
| change in government. Policy implementations remain
| relatively static across the aisle; much ado is made over
| the 5% difference between blue and red, and every other
| position on the political spectrum is quietly kept out of
| the public's eye.
|
| >If we want our government to be better all we have to do
| is vote for better people
|
| Strongly disagree. "Better people" doesn't fix the
| problem, just like "Kill the dictator" doesn't fix the
| problem. The problem is systemic. One good person in a
| position of power, two people - it doesn't matter. The
| solutions to this problem, historically, have been
| extremely painful for the societies implementing them.
| Hopefully the US can do better, but I've never been an
| optimist.
|
| >Then vote for that person and encourage others to do so,
| that's how our society works. You are extremely arrogant
| to think that you should be able to dictate to society
| how it should work and then get pissed off when it
| doesn't listen to you and claim moral superiority by not
| paying your taxes.
|
| 1. I don't have voting rights. 2. I'm not dictating how
| society should work, I'm explaining my preferences and
| ideals for government. 3. I'm not angry, just
| disappointed. 4. I'm not claiming moral superiority, just
| denying moral inferiority. 5. I pay my taxes.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The way you describe it one may as well believe that
| democracy is just a dictatorship with some handwaving.
| You blame "the system" or "the political machine" to
| alleviate responsibility for poor outcomes. The fact is
| that we, as a people, have significant levels of control
| over our government and yet we have a shitty result. We
| are simply not as good and smart as we like to think we
| are.
|
| Regardless, I don't think a billionaire looking at the
| elected government of their country and saying "I know
| better than the people you elected, so I am justified in
| evading taxes and spending that money how _I think_ it
| should be spent " is a morally justified position even if
| it is true.
| endominus wrote:
| "To be ruled is both necessary and inherently
| discomfiting (as well as dangerous). For our rulers to be
| accountable to us softens its intrinsic humiliations,
| probably sets some hazy limits to the harms that they
| will voluntarily choose to do to us collectively, and
| thus diminishes some of the dangers to which their rule
| may expose us. To suggest that we can ever hope to have
| the power to make them act just as we would wish them to
| suggests that it is really we, not they, who are ruling.
| This is an illusion, and probably a somewhat malign
| illusion: either a self-deception, or an instance of
| being deceived by others, or very probably both." - John
| Dunn
|
| >Regardless, I don't think a billionaire looking at the
| elected government of their country and saying "I know
| better than the people you elected, so I am justified in
| evading taxes and spending that money how I think it
| should be spent" is a morally justified position even if
| it is true.
|
| What if the elected government is actually evil? Ever
| heard the quote, "When injustice becomes law, resistance
| becomes duty"? There are a number of dictators, aside
| from the obvious example, who were democratically
| elected. There are many countries who use their people's
| wealth to fund genocidal campaigns against minorities
| within their borders. Some of those countries are
| representative democracies.
|
| If it is _true_ that an individual knows better than the
| elected government and is more moral than them, and you
| still insist that their power (for what is wealth but
| liquid power?) be squandered or used for evil ends, I
| just don 't know hwat to say to you. It is a baffling and
| honestly frightening position to take. To abnegate your
| own will and submit to that of the people, out of blind
| faith that they will be right. It is the core to the
| surrender to every lynch mob, every witch hunt, every
| moral panic that blinds people and initiates their
| frenzies of hate.
|
| "We are not as good and smart as we like to think we are"
| - so we should just allow the zeitgeist to determine our
| morality and sink our intellect to the lowest common
| denominator? Is that really what you believe? And which
| of us, exactly, is "alleviating responsibility?" I place
| it on a broken system; you on a fallen people.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > What if the elected government is actually evil? Ever
| heard the quote, "When injustice becomes law, resistance
| becomes duty"?
|
| I don't think "taking advantage of all the benefits of a
| nation's resources and infrastructure while
| simultaneously contributing nothing, which I can only
| really get away with because I'm so successful" is a very
| good form of "resistance". Let's be frank here: there is
| absolutely no billionaire out there evading taxes because
| they have a moral problem with how their government uses
| it.
|
| > If it is true that an individual knows better than the
| elected government and is more moral than them, and you
| still insist that their power (for what is wealth but
| liquid power?) be squandered or used for evil ends, I
| just don't know hwat to say to you.
|
| I believe pretty much every individual will claim that
| they are those things. Which one do believe actually does
| know better and will be more moral? If only there were
| some kind of system where we could choose...
|
| > To abnegate your own will and submit to that of the
| people, out of blind faith that they will be right. It is
| the core to the surrender to every lynch mob, every witch
| hunt, every moral panic that blinds people and initiates
| their frenzies of hate.
|
| We're talking about paying your fucking taxes for fuck
| sake. This isn't about blind faith in rightness, it's
| about your society electing a government, you being a
| part of that society and wishing to continue being a part
| of that society, and therefore you pay your fucking
| taxes. It isn't about subsuming your will to a mob, it's
| about not hypocritically enjoying the benefits of society
| while bemoaning doing your part in keeping it running.
|
| > "We are not as good and smart as we like to think we
| are" - so we should just allow the zeitgeist to determine
| our morality and sink our intellect to the lowest common
| denominator?
|
| No. We should not pretend that we are justifying not
| paying taxes for moral reasons when we are still totally
| ok with benefiting from that same immorality. That isn't
| a brave stance against injustice, it's trying to justify
| greed by masking it as virtuous, and that's immoral.
| endominus wrote:
| >Which one do believe actually does know better and will
| be more moral?
|
| You literally said that even if the billionaire is right
| (i.e. knows better how to improve people's lives with
| philanthropy), he should still give up his money. Your
| argument has nothing to do with morality, and everything
| to do with authoritarianism.
|
| >We're talking about paying your fucking taxes for fuck
| sake.
|
| No, we're talking about a society's allocation of
| resources. If a government cannot or will not allocate
| them to the benefit of a society, it has no moral right
| to them. This entire argument started out of the claim
| that billionaires getting tax breaks for philanthropy is
| wrong; that they should instead redirect that wealth to
| governments to do with as they will. If the actions of
| the government will do less good than whatever ends that
| philanthropy would have led to, then it is wrong to
| demand that the money be wasted that way.
|
| >That isn't a brave stance against injustice, it's trying
| to justify greed by masking it as virtuous, and that's
| immoral.
|
| So your argument is that billionaires giving money to
| philanthropic causes is fundamentally immoral because
| they are doing it to justify greed and because
| governments incentivize that behavior by offering tax
| breaks?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > You literally said that even if the billionaire is
| right (i.e. knows better how to improve people's lives
| with philanthropy), he should still give up his money.
| Your argument has nothing to do with morality, and
| everything to do with authoritarianism.
|
| He should give up his money because if you are a part of
| society and benefit from it, that obliges you to
| contribute to the maintenance of that society. It isn't
| about authoritarianism and your attempts to equate the
| two is ridiculous.
|
| > No, we're talking about a society's allocation of
| resources. If a government cannot or will not allocate
| them to the benefit of a society, it has no moral right
| to them.
|
| Then it should be replaced, or abandoned. The solution is
| not eating your cake and having it too and pretending
| that is righteous.
|
| > This entire argument started out of the claim that
| billionaires getting tax breaks for philanthropy is
| wrong; that they should instead redirect that wealth to
| governments to do with as they will. If the actions of
| the government will do less good than whatever ends that
| philanthropy would have led to, then it is wrong to
| demand that the money be wasted that way.
|
| Getting a tax _break_ , an exemption. Not that all the
| philanthropy should go away, merely that they don't
| deserve special exemption for it... Which isn't even
| something I'm arguing!
|
| I jumped in to point out that governments appear to waste
| money because people have different opinions of where
| money should go and the government represents people. It
| will always appear wasteful to somebody.
|
| Then this whole thing somehow devolved into trying to
| justify tax evasion as a valid form of protest, which I
| find absolutely ridiculous.
|
| > So your argument is that billionaires giving money to
| philanthropic causes
|
| I never said that philanthropy was wrong. I said people
| should pay their taxes. Would you kindly stop trying to
| strawman me as an authoritarian populist who hates
| charity or whatever the fuck crazy nonsense you'll think
| of next?
| endominus wrote:
| >He should give up his money because if you are a part of
| society and benefit from it, that obliges you to
| contribute to the maintenance of that society.
|
| Sure. But that's not what you're actually arguing for;
| the point you're making is instead that you are obliged
| to give your money to the government in the hopes that
| they will contribute to the maintenance of that society.
| If I or anyone else can and am/are willing to do it more
| efficiently than the government can or will, you would
| still demand it go through the government, for no more
| justification than the fig leaf of the will of the
| people, which is not a homogeneous thing in any case _as
| you pointed out_ and therefore is not some sacred duty
| that only the government is morally authorized to
| perform. If a billionaire or anyone else can make their
| money work better for a society than the government can,
| they should be allowed to.
|
| >Then this whole thing somehow devolved into somehow
| trying to justify tax evasion as a valid form of protest
|
| Except it didn't? I have never made an argument either
| for tax evasion or protest in this thread. The closest I
| got was the Jefferson quote, which is in the context of
| an _actually evil government_. I 'm making the moral
| argument for billionaire philanthropy. And yes, removing
| tax breaks for said philanthropy will reduce it. It may
| marginally increase tax revenue. And on the whole, the
| result of that will probably, in my opinion, be a bad
| thing. It will result in more suffering than allowing tax
| breaks for philanthropy. My understanding is that you
| accept that this is true, and are saying that even though
| it is the case, it is still morally superior for that
| wealth to go to less effective government projects than
| more effective philanthropy.
|
| >I never said that philanthropy was wrong.
|
| So when you said "That isn't a brave stance against
| injustice, it's trying to justify greed by masking it as
| virtuous, and that's immoral" what is immoral, exactly?
| Because reading that paragraph, the only act that seems
| to refer to is "philanthropy."
|
| Also, you think _I 'm_ strawmanning _you_? You 've
| claimed that I assume moral superiority for not paying
| taxes, that I'm advocating for purely extractive economic
| activity and tax evasion from billionaires, and that my
| entire point is about masking greed through virtuous
| language. If you have a point that's not just handwaving
| away inefficiencies in government as an unimpeachable
| divine will of the people made manifest, I have yet to
| hear it. Taxes are not a moral good. They are a strategy
| for asset reallocation. If they work well, fine. If they
| don't, we should not pretend that we have to pay them for
| any reason other than the threat of force. If
| billionaires can do better than the government can
| through philanthropy, great! Let them. If it seems to be
| working - and a large part of philanthropy seems to be
| working - then incentivize that behavior, socially
| through status or economically through tax exemptions.
|
| There are things that tax is necessary for. Critical
| infrastructure, the unsexy parts of building and
| maintaining a society (roads, sewers, etc), legislative
| and executive matters, national defense. There are things
| that both public money and private money can be useful
| for - social welfare, education, research, etc. Often,
| the private money results in much better outcomes in fair
| trials; it is less bounded by realpolitik and is more
| agile in redeployment to more effective methods. Often,
| the tax money is much greater than what is actually
| necessary for the achieved purpose. The United States
| spends a roughly equal amount of its tax income on public
| healthcare as the UK does, and has nothing comparable to
| the NHS. When it tries to reduce spending, it does so not
| by adapting itself to the times, reinventing itself like
| any long-running institution should aim to do, but by
| accumulating another layer of cruft, becoming ever
| greater, ever less efficient. The system creaks under the
| weight of its debts, just as the VA offices creak under
| the weight of thousands of tons of paperwork, as the
| halls of power creak under the load of yet more
| stultifying regulation, presented only to entrench the
| powers that be. It creaks under the weight of politicians
| made fat over the wealth of the people, vying for power
| among the crumbling institutions that first generated
| that wealth, now dilapidated, hollowed out and filled
| again with sycophants and psychopaths.
|
| Pay your taxes. But don't pretend that paying taxes is
| morally superior to just giving money to a good cause.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Sure. But that's not what you're actually arguing for;
| the point you're making is instead that you are obliged
| to give your money to the government in the hopes that
| they will contribute to the maintenance of that society.
| If I or anyone else can and am/are willing to do it more
| efficiently than the government can or will [...]
|
| Most individuals will believe that they can distribute
| that money more efficiently, partially because they are
| largely ignorant of vast swaths of things the government
| supports that keeps society running, partially because
| everyone suffers from Dunning-Kruger, and partially out
| of sheer selfishness. We collect taxes from everyone,
| pool it, and elect a body of representatives to determine
| how to allocate it for the betterment of all. Sometimes
| they will not do that, and I say that is on us as voters
| as much as it is them. It isn't perfect, but what does
| the alternative look like? What kind of system are you
| advocating for?
|
| > I have never made an argument either for tax evasion or
| protest in this thread. The closest I got was the
| Jefferson quote, which is in the context of an actually
| evil government.
|
| Yes. How else am I meant to take that quote except as an
| illustration that one can justify not paying taxes on
| moral grounds because they don't agree with the way they
| are spent?
|
| Case in point:
|
| > If you have a point that's not just handwaving away
| inefficiencies in government as an unimpeachable divine
| will of the people made manifest, I have yet to hear it.
|
| > It creaks under the weight of politicians made fat over
| the wealth of the people, vying for power among the
| crumbling institutions that first generated that wealth,
| now dilapidated, hollowed out and filled again with
| sycophants and psychopaths.
|
| How am I not supposed to read this, under the context of
| that Jefferson quote, as "the government does inefficient
| stuff sometimes, so that morally justifies not paying
| taxes".
|
| > I'm making the moral argument for billionaire
| philanthropy. And yes, removing tax breaks for said
| philanthropy will reduce it. It may marginally increase
| tax revenue. And on the whole, the result of that will
| probably, in my opinion, be a bad thing.
|
| I'm not 100% sold on that idea, simply because the
| "philanthropy" need not necessarily actually contribute
| positively to society. That person is effectively taking
| taxes that might be used to, say, pay for Medicare and
| redirecting it to, say, an evangelical organization that
| does nothing but pester people to convert to their
| religion. I am not sure we should encourage that, but I
| am not really against the concept either.
|
| > So when you said "That isn't a brave stance against
| injustice, it's trying to justify greed by masking it as
| virtuous, and that's immoral" what is immoral, exactly?
| Because reading that paragraph, the only act that seems
| to refer to is "philanthropy."
|
| No one is preventing billionaires from using their money
| to try and make the world a better place, what is being
| argued is that maybe they shouldn't get tax breaks for
| it. Is it morally right that a billionaire only gives
| money to some cause (which again, may not actually be for
| the betterment of society) .
|
| > Taxes are not a moral good.
|
| ...I can't 100% agree with that statement. Taxes are a
| part of the social contract, and to that extent paying
| them is honoring the contract, which all else being equal
| is good.
|
| > They are a strategy for asset reallocation. If they
| work well, fine. If they don't, we should not pretend
| that we have to pay them for any reason other than the
| threat of force.
|
| Again, it is difficult to divorce this from the Jefferson
| quote. It sounds very much like you are saying you
| believe that taxes are not working for the betterment of
| society and are basically theft. As far as I am aware, we
| are talking about real billionaires in the real world
| with real governments, not some hypothetical totally
| corrupt and practically unelected show-democracy.
|
| > If billionaires can do better than the government can
| through philanthropy, great! Let them. If it seems to be
| working - and a large part of philanthropy seems to be
| working - then incentivize that behavior, socially
| through status or economically through tax exemptions.
|
| I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I am weary of
| the idea that any given person's choice of where that
| money should be spent will be better. Especially since I
| find it difficult to disagree with others in this thread
| saying that no one gets to be that wealthy without being
| a bastard in some regards, so I'm especially weary of
| letting them skip out on their obligation to society in
| favor of whatever they think is more important. As flawed
| as it is, I trust the government to allocate those
| resources better for society because we have at least
| some measure of control over it via democracy.
|
| Aside from the above mentioned line about sycophants and
| psychopaths, I agree that our government could be a lot
| better. However, I seriously doubt that putting our faith
| in billionaires to be generous is the way forward on
| that.
|
| Ok, we keep going back and forth on this stuff so let me
| sum up my position:
|
| Taxes are part of the social contract, so anyone in
| society should pay them if they are taking advantage of
| the infrastructure and services that society provides.
| The elected government of a democracy is not a perfect
| system for allocating taxes for the betterment of
| society, but it is the best system we have. I don't trust
| billionaires, who almost certainly attained their wealth
| in large part by being ruthless and exploiting loopholes,
| to not exploit tax-deductible charity, and they certainly
| have enough wealth to not need to.
| dangus wrote:
| A billionaire is a single unelected person. Only a pure
| dictatorship is less representative than that.
|
| I'd take a flawed government with some semblance of an
| electoral process and representative taxation over
| dependence on a benevolent individual.
|
| For every Bill Gates there is a Charles Koch.
| endominus wrote:
| The other, important, difference being that I am not
| required to fund the billionaire. If I object to the
| actions of a billionaire, it's not my money that's being
| misused.
| developer93 wrote:
| Most of them are tax avoiding, so yes, they are using
| your money. Or at least causing your money to be spent on
| other things than it would if they contributed
| proportional to their advantage.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm not?
|
| How should I stop using Comcast for my Internet?
|
| What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s
| besides IE on an ActiveX page?
|
| What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple
| phone?
|
| How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By
| avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands?
|
| These are just a few examples of the negatives of
| capitalist consolidation.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| Comcast maintains their monopoly through state power.
| Through licensing, easement access, and other
| regulations, no one takes on Comcast.
| endominus wrote:
| >What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s
| besides IE?
|
| Netscape? Opera? Lynx? All of which predate IE.
|
| >What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple
| phone?
|
| A dumb one. Or install something like LineageOS. And if
| your complaint is that they're not as nice, well, they're
| not required to be. Philosophical positions and moral
| boundaries have a price, and convenience is a small one
| to pay.
|
| >How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By
| avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands?
|
| Yes. That's exactly what you do. With the exception of
| certain pharmaceuticals, the vast majority of the stuff
| they sell is not necessary. If you don't want to support
| billionaires, don't be suckered into the consumerist
| trap. It's not hard to live with, and want, less stuff.
|
| Honestly, the sibling comment about billionaires
| capturing critical infrastructure and monopolizing it is
| a much better argument than this. But you're not even
| trying to look at the issue from my perspective. If you
| object to the way your government is spending its money,
| as many citizens have done over the past twenty years,
| what can you actually do about it? The consequences of
| withholding your money from the tax man is much more
| severe than doing so from Bill Gates or Charles Koch.
| 310260 wrote:
| >I am not required to fund the billionaire.
|
| Except, of course, when whatever elaborate mousetrap they
| used to gain their billions becomes a monopoly and also
| critical infrastructure.
| endominus wrote:
| An excellent point! But that is something that a
| billionaire _may_ do. And often the answer to that is
| government action - see how often a government will
| actually take said action. It is something the government
| by its very nature _will_ do, and there is no
| counterbalancing force.
|
| The immediate rebuttal that comes to mind is that the
| government does not dismantle the billionaire's
| monopolistic scheme because of regulatory capture, and
| because the billionaire has effectively suborned the
| government. If you are about to make that argument, I
| suggest you introspect a little, as you would only be
| making my point; the "representative government" is not
| spending its resources according to the will of the
| people in any case.
| [deleted]
| par wrote:
| oldie but such a classic
| Animats wrote:
| And they grow up to teach computer hacking classes to sysadmins
| and law enforcement.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.sans.org/cyber-security-courses/hacker-
| technique...
| aasasd wrote:
| My only lament with this is that the link prominently has 'humor'
| in it, so I can't subject unsuspecting friends to the text. Guess
| I'm off to one of the 'archive' sites, with more cryptic urls.
|
| Edit: here it is https://archive.is/e0diF
|
| Or
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040612092245/http://www.adequa...
| redleader55 wrote:
| In an age of "post-truth", out of control "political correctness"
| and all the other daemons, it's hard to read this and even
| realise it is supposed to be satire.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| Please don't hijack the conversation to whinge about political
| correctness.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Adequacy.org is just... it's from a different generation of the
| Internet. As someone who read this close to publication, and was
| fifteen at the time... what a read, haha.
| [deleted]
| tr1ll10nb1ll wrote:
| I'm assuming that this is obviously satire. Looking at some of
| the comments on HN tho, it makes me feel like it might not be.
| Please correct me if I'm wrong.
| g00gler wrote:
| I thought this was a joke too. I got a kick out of the idea of
| some high schooler or college freshman's satire causing a bunch
| of parents to force their kids to remove flash in 2001 because
| its a "computer hacking tool".
|
| The other stuff like "you can't remove Linux without damaging
| the hard drive" and that you have to send it back to the
| manufacturer to be replaced just seems so cheeky...
| the_only_law wrote:
| > and that you have to send it back to the manufacturer to be
| replaced just seems so cheeky...
|
| This reads to me like some scripted item a jaded customer
| service representative reads to a computer-illiterate
| customer complaining about something on their computer, who
| of course believes it.
| endominus wrote:
| I once had a scammer call me, claiming to be from Microsoft
| support and trying to convince me to install a RAT. When he
| asked if I was using Windows or Mac, I replied "Linux." He
| was aghast, saying that was "illegal" and he would be
| reporting me for breaking the law unless I complied with his
| directives. Had a good laugh at that one.
| kaybe wrote:
| I told him we didn't have a computer. That didn't register
| at all, he still tried to get me to install something,
| somehow, despite my insistence.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| "Okay, let me toggle the bootloader in. Call me back in
| about an hour."
| busymom0 wrote:
| > If your son has requested a new "processor" from a company
| called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-
| world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of
| American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in
| their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the
| security features that American processor makers, such as Intel,
| use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and
| you will most likely be told that you have to order them from
| internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that
| you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising
| him well.
|
| I can't tell if this post is serious or satire? Was this actually
| the consensus back in 2001?
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I've looked for this off and on for a long time. What a relic. It
| belongs in a museum.
|
| Thank you so much for finding it.
| ww520 wrote:
| I did some phone phreaking when I was a kid. Wrote a Basic
| program to control the modem to randomly try out local numbers
| that can call long distance because most of the cool BBS with
| lots of warez were long distance at that time.
|
| It went well for a while. But then one of my parents' friends
| called my home and couldn't get through because my program ran
| for hours tying up the line. He called the phone company to
| complain. The phone company investigated and my parents got mad
| at me, and that's the end of my phreaking career. I was mad at
| that friend for snitching.
| [deleted]
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